Hey, font nerds: MyFonts.com launches iPhone app
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If (like me) you are a font nerd, and if (like me) your job has nothing to do with choosing fonts, then let me recommend that you not go to www.myfonts.com right now. (Unless you are reading this on a weekend, early morning, late at night or any other time you aren’t at work.) I just spent two hours going down the MyFonts.com rabbit hole, gorging myself on serif, sans-serif, Swiss, Deco, ‘50s and cursive fonts. MyFonts.com has fonts from more than 500 designers and foundries for sale, and even though I can’t think of a single reason why I should be looking at them, I can’t seem to tear myself away!
MyFonts.com has been around since 1999, but if you haven’t heard of it that’s because it used to have a very bad website, which earlier this year was relaunched as a very cool website. The fonts, which range in price from free to $75, are now arranged in all kinds of categories like wedding, organic, ‘70s, newest, signage and legible. They’ve kept the ‘What the Font’ feature that allows users to upload a jpeg of a font for identification -- a nifty service they’ve had since 2000 -- and, anticipating font emergencies, they’ve added an of the moment iPhone app that allows a user to snap a picture of a font he or she might have seen on the street or in a magazine and have myfont.com tell you what it is.
As for what’s happening in the font world right now, Kevin Woodward, the company’s Web product manager said script fonts are having a moment. MyFonts.com puts out a newsletter called Rising Stars (of the font world) and the script fonts have been topping the list. Woodward has a theory as to why this might be: ‘The text font becomes your workhorse, but a script font is more like a fashion accessory,’ he said. In other words, if the text font is your trusty pair of awesome jeans, then the scripts are the cute tops you accessorize it with. New top (or new script) and you get a whole different look.
FONTS!
-- Deborah Netburn
Credit: Font artwork designed by Sideshow for MyFonts.com
Correction: An earlier version of this story credited the font artwork incorrectly and pointed to an older version of the Rising Stars newsletter. It is all better now!
